Holyfield can do the right thing

With the Internal Revenue Service's April 15th filing deadline just a few weeks away, I've already decided who I want to do my taxes: Eugenia (Jean) Williams.

Ms Williams is an accountant by trade, and if she can bring the same creativity to my income tax returns that she did to scoring Saturday night's Lewis-Holyfield fight, I can probably count on a substantial refund.

On the other hand, if her calculations include anything half so egregious as her scoring of last Saturday's fifth round - which she scored for Evander Holyfield, even though Lennox Lewis out-punched him 43-11 and knocked his head clean through the ropes in those three minutes - we could both go to jail.

Which, come to think of it, wouldn't be a bad place for her at all.

The outrage over the decision at Madison Square Garden has already sparked three separate investigations by New York authorities alone: the state legislature, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and Governor George Pataki have all vowed inquiries into how and why this travesty of justice occurred.

The expectation here is that the investigations of the aforementioned will unearth not corruption (well, no more corruption than usual; this is boxing, after all) but gross incompetence on the part of at least one of the judges.

While Ms Williams obviously deserves to be singled out, it should be noted that the scoring of British judge Larry O'Connell wasn't much better. Even World Boxing Council (WBC) president Jose Sulaiman, who appointed him, "respectfully disagreed" with his 115-115 draw verdict.

"Mr O'Connell is one of the most prestigious and experienced officials in the world, and is known for his integrity, competency, and impartiality," said Sulaiman in a statement on Tuesday, "and we must assume he went overboard to prove it."

Somewhat surprisingly, O'Connell subsequently (and somewhat sheepishly) acknowledged that he believed Lewis had won the fight, and that he was surprised to hear the totals of his score cards when they were announced. Nonetheless, O'Connell didn't give Lewis a round between the end of the fifth and the final round.

It is the rare instance that we find ourselves in agreement with Senor Sulaiman, but fairness requires that we point out here that, had he had his way, neither Williams nor O'Connell would have been working on Saturday night.

With the undisputed heavyweight championship at stake, each of the sport's three sanctioning bodies was allowed to appoint one judge, subject to the approval of the New York State Athletic Commission. It was Sulaiman's position, as well as that of the World Boxing Association (WBA), that the judges should all come from neutral countries.

Thus the WBA appointed South Africa's Stan Christodoulou and the WBC Belgium's Daniel Van de Weile. It was the International Boxing Federation (IBF) which muddied the waters by insisting upon Williams.

The other two strenuously objected, not because Jean Williams is an incompetent boob (which she is), but because they felt it inappropriate to have a referee and one judge from Holyfield's country and none from Lewis'. O'Connell was duly summoned to fly in from England to stand by as an alternate in case IBF president Bob Lee proved to be intransigent on the matter, which, of course, he did.

If the objections to Williams centered around her lack of experience and potential home-country bias, it should be pointed out that, as a New Jersey official, she is a product of what New York Post columnist Wallace Matthews described as "the same scummy pipeline that gave us Calvin Claxton and Lawrence Layton".

Claxton and Layton were the judges who scored the 1997 George Foreman-Shannon Briggs fight for Briggs, a decision every bit as ludicrous as was Saturday night's "draw". Clayton, Layton and now Williams all spring from a rich tradition of home-grown ineptitude nurtured in New Jersey by present commissioner Larry Hazzard and his predecessor, who happened to be Bob Lee.

Promoter Don King, who began beating the drums for a rematch the moment the verdict was announced, defended the officials - Ms Williams included.

"Judge not lest ye be judged," bellowed King at the post-fight press conference. "Shall we castigate the judges just because you don't have the same eyeballs?"

New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who was seated at ringside, echoed the disgust of most witnesses to the Lewis-Holyfield larceny.

"There were a lot of people here from England," said Giuliani, "and they have to be going home thinking that we're a bunch of cheats."

Grateful for the decision, Holyfield shrugged and said: "I don't judge fights."

Only once during post-fight questioning did Evander slip up. In recalling his wrong-headed strategy, he concluded one string of excuse-making by saying: ". . . but I don't want to take nothing away from a man's victory."

On Monday, Lewis and Holyfield sat down in a midtown HBO studio and watched the fight together. Their comments were taped for the network's home telecast of the bout, which will be shown, free of charge, to the nation tomorrow night.

Lewis reiterated his contention that he had been robbed. Holyfield said just what you would have expected him to say, that the fight was a draw.

Before they met in the ring, Lewis had suggested that Holyfield was a "hypocrite" for espousing his spirituality while fathering five out-of-wedlock children. The devout Evander would seem to have further jeopardised his place in Heaven, standing in violation of at least one and possibly two more commandments: "The Shalt Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbour" and, maybe, "Thou Shalt Not Steal".

All three sanctioning bodies, both fighters, and, of course, King are already beating the drums for a mandatory rematch - although as we have pointed out, given the contractual realities of the situation, it is by no means certain that Lewis-Holyfield II will even be economically viable.

Evander, a proud man, still has a chance to do the right thing. He could announce his retirement right now, and hand the belts over to Lennox Lewis. To do otherwise, in fact, is to risk having his reputation forever tarnished by what happened in New York last weekend.